Financial Update
Financial Update
We wanted to take a moment to bring you up to date on some exciting things that are happening around here at Grace.
It was a year ago this Sunday that we concluded our NEXT Vision and Stewardship Initiative. Many of us declared our giving Intentions for the next two years – 2017 and 2018 – that day. We haven’t said much about it since then, but we didn’t want to let this milestone past without celebrating some of the outcomes of that effort.
First, hundreds of people declared their intention to take their next step on the Generosity Journey, from New Giving to Regular Giving, to Proportionate Giving to Abundant Giving, and have followed through on those Intentions. As a result we find ourselves right on budget as of last month, meaning all our ministries and partners are fully funded, and we are exactly halfway toward meeting our 2 year Intentions. We are also seeing the same growth in giving across all of our campuses!
What’s more exciting - we added hundreds of new givers this past year, and those new givers alone have given almost a million dollars! So if you have recently started giving through Grace, you have helped to make a million dollar difference in the world!
We’re also happy to announce that the combined Global Awareness and Christmas Eve offering collected $135,000 that we were able to give to World Relief to support their work among the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh! We are humbled and amazed at how generous God and His people have been, and at all the good that has been done here and around the world.
Let’s not forget that this time last year the Foxboro campus was just a dream and a prayer! Because of your generosity, that campus has been renovated, staffed, and launched, and 200-some people are gathering there for worship every Sunday! A church that was about to close it’s doors is now a flourishing faith community of children, students and adults discovering life with God for the good of the world!
We’ve also been able to move ahead with growth plans for the Wilmington campus. As you know, the two worship services are just about full there, and the Kidstown and Student spaces are full to overflowing. So we are moving ahead with building design plans and construction documents, in hopes of expanding that facility to serve and reach more people.
As we look to the future, and consider the changing financial times in which we live, we believe we’re going to need more pastoral leadership in the area of stewardship – helping us use our time, talent, and treasure to serve God’s Kingdom in this world. There will be more about that on our website and in Inside Grace in coming weeks.
We continue to be amazed at all God is doing in and through Grace Chapel these days, and we are grateful for the part that each of you have played in that story.